M-visa vs Pesalink

Mpesa has been here for quite a long time now. It’s been serving as well. It’s also inspired or rather pushed other innovators to invest more in Mobile Banking.

There are currently two other newplatform that also ply the same field i.e M-visa and Pesalink.

M-visa is a product of India in collaboration with Visa where as Pesalink is a product of KBA(Kenya Bankers Association) through its fully owned financial technologies firm-IPSL (Integrated Payment Services Limited)

Both of these platform Target the banking industry. They mainly aim at enabling the future vision of a cashless transaction system possible.

M-visa was first launched in ICICI Bank, India. With M-visa, banks that have been registered with them issue their account holders with 16-digit code to use as there M-visa number. The number,which is linked to their bank account, is used for sending and receiving money from any bank registered to with it, the platform. It’s important to note that the number differ from the credit or debit card number.

The system also allowed user to pay Merchant to pay goods by scanning the Merchant QR code. It acted as an initiative to make the payment process exciting. M-visa works both by USSD and the Banking app of the registered bank.

Although the platform was introduced in Kenya last year, it’s uptake by consumers is low and some banks are reluctant to register with the platform since they’re developing and promoting their own similar platform as provided by M-visa. This is evidently with Equity Bank’s Eazzy pay.

Pesalink on the other hand is mainly for Bank to bank transfer. It can be initiated from 5 main bank channels: Mobile Banking,(USSD & Application), internet banking, ATM, Branch front office, Agency Banking and POS.

How it works; pesalink links your your bank account to your phone number. Individuals are allowed to attach more than one bank account on that number. Hence when making the payment the sender would choose the bank account to send to. Payment can also be done directly to the bank account or the card. It takes about 45 seconds to complete the whole process. The platform can allow transactions of about Ksh(10-999999) to go through at any

Pesalink works on a 24/7 clock system. The service is not quite in major use due to clients’ ignorance. But once effected it. It Could lead to a cashless system. Offer 20 banks in Kenya have registered for the service.

So, it’s safe to say you can send and receive money from any bank in Kenya.